End of lease car clean in Hillingdon

The inspection

What the torch finds on a Hillingdon car, and what the clean does about it

Alloys. First thing photographed, every time. A car that has done three years on the M4, the M25 and the A40 has brake dust rusted into the wheel faces as a brown shadow that reads as kerb damage under a torch. The iron remover in the Exterior Detail dissolves it; the End of Lease clean then finishes clean wheels.

Paint. Under the Heathrow approach, in Harlington, Hayes, Sipson and West Drayton, three years of the airport's oily film has worked into the lacquer and the car looks grey in daylight, which an inspector may record as faded or oxidised paint. The decontamination and clay in the Exterior Detail take it back to the colour it was, and the inspector records what is actually there.

Carpets and seats. Salt tide marks from three winters, Lido sand in the runners, the dog, the children. The shampoo add on lifts what has soaked into the fabric; without it, a vacuum flattens the marks and the torch finds them.

Glass, plastics, boot and shuts. Inside glass filmed from cold mornings, dash plastics dulled by airport dust, a boot that has never been fully empty, door shuts and sills nobody has wiped since delivery. All of it is in the clean, because these are the places that tell an inspector whether the car was looked after.

What it does not fix. Scratches, dents, kerbed rims and stone chips. Those are damage. The photographs will show them as they are, which is still worth having, because a dated record of a small chip is the difference between paying for a small chip and paying for a respray.

Lease country

Stockley Park, the airport and the A40

Stockley Park's 274 acres between Hayes, Yiewsley and West Drayton hold the borough's biggest cluster of company cars, Heathrow's staff run thousands more on salary sacrifice and lease schemes, and the offices along the A40 at Uxbridge and Hillingdon add the rest. These cars go home at night to drives in Ickenham and Ruislip, to permit bays in Hayes and Uxbridge, and to allocated spaces under the blocks at the Old Vinyl Factory and Hayes Village, and that is where the clean happens. A drive is the easy case. A permit bay works because the car stays in it and the washer parks legally nearby; Hillingdon's permits are virtual and tied to your registration, so nothing about the visit touches them. An undercroft space works if every door can open, and the washer brings water, power and light.

1. A week before: the Exterior Detail if the paint is rough or the wheels are brown; the Full Interior Detail if the inside has had a hard life.
2. Three to five days before: the End of Lease clean, in a morning window now the clocks have gone back, so the carpets dry through the afternoon.
3. Until collection: the car stays off the mud and, as far as possible, out of the rain. The photographs are already in your wash report.
4. Collection day: the car goes back on a dry day, or is picked up from the drive. Nothing happens at the dealer.

Lease cars we see handed back in Hillingdon

• Stockley Park company car, three years on the M4: Exterior Detail for the wheels and the tar, then the End of Lease clean.
• Harlington car that lived under the approach: Exterior Detail for the airport film, so the paint is recorded as its real colour.
• Ruislip family PCP car: End of Lease clean with the shampoo add on, for the Lido and the dog.
• Heathrow shift worker's salary sacrifice car: Full Interior Detail the week before, End of Lease clean on a morning after the sleep.
• Uxbridge car in a UX permit bay: End of Lease clean in the bay, zone noted in the booking.
• The car you are buying out at the end: skip this page; the Super Valet is the one for a car that is now yours.

More on this: exterior detailing in Hillingdon and what a mobile valet includes.